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Paul Penrose says:
The article did not claim the Japanese results were new or surprising. Neither did I. So that part of your argument is a straw man. All I said is that this data is useful and worth reporting, even if it only adds to all the other data we have. Stop projecting your own biases onto me.
OK, I just noticed the article subheading which claimed the results are new. I didnt read that before (I usually ignore the subheadings). From what I know, this is not really new, but I didnt read the entire paper to see if there really was anything new in it.
How does this relate to other data showing that the Sun's magnetic field is in decline:
OK...cancel that question...seems the Suns magnetic field has perked up:
The current solar cycle 24 reached its probable peak in 2014, with a yearly averaged sunspot number of 79, compared with maximum numbers ranging from 106 to 190 for the previous five cycles of the space age.1 The low amplitude of the current cycle, and the unusually quiet nature of the sunspot minimum of 20082009, have led to speculation that the Sun may be entering a prolonged period of extremely low activity resembling the Maunder Minimum of 16451715, when sunspots almost disappeared (Eddy 1976; Barnard et al. 2011; Lockwood et al. 2011). Thus, it was surprising when the Sun's large-scale magnetic field underwent a sudden rejuvenation toward the end of 2014.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/809/2/113
THE RECENT REJUVENATION OF THE SUN'S LARGE-SCALE MAGNETIC FIELD: A CLUE FOR UNDERSTANDING PAST AND FUTURE SUNSPOT CYCLES
N. R. Sheeley Jr. and Y.-M. Wang
Published 2015 August 14 © 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 809, Number 2